This week marks a pivotal moment in the digital video ecosystem as Connatix and JW Player proudly join forces to form a new industry powerhouse, JWP Connatix. This merger ushers in an exciting new chapter as we combine our strengths in scaled premium streaming and video monetization to create the industry’s most comprehensive independent video technology and monetization platform for broadcasters, publishers, and advertisers.
We’re thrilled to bring our two companies together and want to take this opportunity to explain why this merger holds such tremendous potential.
Rich History: Over A Decade In the Making
To grasp why this union is so strategic, it’s important to explore how each company has taken two distinct yet complementary approaches to the video market over the past decade.
First, let’s talk about JW Player (JWP). JWP initially gained traction among developers with its enormously popular open source video player, the JW Player. This allowed it to organically build a massive customer footprint and ultimately paved the way for its transformation from a video player to one of the most widely-adopted video streaming and technology platforms in the world. Its value prop was twofold: (i) to provide robust video workflows and streaming technology at global scale and (ii) to help customers grow their revenue by leveraging billions of daily unique contextual and consumption data signals across a massive customer footprint.
Connatix initially devoted itself to directly monetizing publishers’ video inventory. Using a scrappy, yet innovative approach, Connatix built a rapidly-growing direct and programmatic video advertising business, with a compelling value proposition for advertisers. Connatix’s tech stack helps publishers create, deliver and monetize streaming video, while also providing advertisers with premium video inventory and a collection of data intelligence solutions including Deep Contextual™and predictive audience targeting.
The Evolving Marketplace
While both companies were driving value to our customers individually, seismic changes have been taking place in the digital video marketplace that create an opportunity to drive even greater success together. Consumers are increasingly cutting the cord in favor of CTV and streaming services, leading to rapid shifts in global advertising spend and the emergence of new direct-to-consumer subscription and pay-per-view offerings. Publishers are paying the price for these shifts, seeing flattening traffic that has reinforced the need for engaging content and ad-generated revenue streams. And finally, new video-based monetization opportunities have exploded onto the scene, namely video commerce, which is a $918B market in 2024 and will become massively important to all media companies in the coming years.
These significant shifts for broadcasters, publishers and advertisers require a partner capable of helping them adapt to evolving industry needs while maximizing revenue.
The Combined Value
When JWP and Connatix started discussing a potential partnership, three key things became clear. First, we shared a similar mission – to deliver the best possible experience across screens while helping our customers connect with their audiences anywhere, anytime, and maximizing revenue. Second, our views of the market were practically identical: broadcasters, publishers and advertisers’ businesses are changing and a new solution is vital. And third, the convergence of our products and team expertise presented a unique opportunity to help our customers adapt to industry shifts by delivering the best technology and monetization solutions in a single unified platform.
What This Means for Our Customers
Fast-forward to today, we’re proud to unite as one, bringing the most innovative minds in video together to usher in a new era for digital video. JWP Connatix is committed to providing the highest quality experience for our customers and their viewers. Our capability to stream billions of video minutes and impressions to any screen remains a fundamental part of our value proposition. We will continue to enhance our platform to equip our customers with the tools and insights they need to maximize revenue. Alongside our advanced platform and unique data, we have an expert team to support our customers throughout their journey.
JWP Connatix is now streaming, are you ready? Reach out to us to learn more about what’s next!